OTTER COUNTRY

A celebration of a wily mammal.

Nature writer Darlington, author of The Wise Hours, has been enchanted with otters since childhood, and she recounts her travels across England, Scotland, and Wales in search of the elusive creature. She devoted a year to plodding across moors, wading through marshes, walking along peat bogs, traversing rivers, and swimming in the sea, and she records her journey in precise, poetic prose. She read widely, met others obsessed with otters, and visited nature sanctuaries. Early in her exploration, she spotted one: “Just over a metre in length, he has the dimensions of a male or dog otter, with a broad, flat head, large back feet and a long, tapering tail. It’s the magnificent ruff of whiskers that surprises me, and the bulk of him, the fur sleek from fishing out in the loch.” Although otters have few natural predators, they live “on a knife-edge,” needing “to be resilient and versatile enough to cope with sudden fluctuations in food sources, pollution incidents and other environmental changes such as floods and the encroachments of human activity.” Those challenges have not kept them from returning to territories where they have long thrived, but they have proven perilous when otters have been run over when crossing roads. Darlington became an expert at tracking otters by following their droppings, and she teaches us about their evolution, behavior, and life cycle. She evokes in sensuous detail the flora and fauna (including a threatening wild boar and swarming midges) that she encountered along the way, as well as the detritus of modern life: discarded diapers, plastic water bottles, fast-food packaging, and more. Her immersive year proved revelatory: Rainer Maria Rilke, she observes, put it aptly: “There is no part of the world that is not looking at you. You must change your life.”

Darlington delivers another delightfully lyrical nature chronicle.